1. Field of the Invention
The present invention generally relates to image forming and, more particularly, to an image forming apparatus, a restore control method, and a storage medium.
2. Description of the Related Art
An image forming apparatus has a function for storing and managing various pieces of data in a storage device. In many cases, an image forming apparatus has a function for extracting and backing up data from a predetermined time point, and restoring the backed up data as necessary. Further, an image forming apparatus may also have a function for equalizing data pieces in a plurality of image forming apparatuses by restoring backed up data on a separate image forming apparatus.
However, the state of an image forming apparatus when backed up data is restored may not be the same as when the data was extracted from a memory and backed up. Consequently, if all of the backed up data pieces are simply restored, there is the problem that unnecessary data may also be stored on the image forming apparatus.
Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2007-87001 discusses a method which, when backing up a setting value from an image forming apparatus, manages the data by distinguishing between common data that is common to image forming apparatuses and difference data that is different for each image forming apparatus. According to this method, an effective backup and restoration can be executed by distinguishing between image forming apparatus common data and image forming apparatus difference data.
However, the state of the image forming apparatus may not always be constant, and can change from that when the backup data was produced. In such a case, if the backup data is simply restored, even data not really required by the image forming apparatus may be restored. Since the capacity of the storage area in the image forming apparatus is usually limited, restoring unnecessary data can cause the problem that the data that is really required may not be able to be stored.
Further, there are also cases in which edited backup data produced by editing backup data and rewriting or merging the data, for example, is distributed to an unspecified number of image forming apparatuses. In this case, if the edited backup data is simply restored as described above, even data not really required by the image forming apparatus may be restored, which is a problem.